14 September 2018 – Friday - The Exaltation of the Cross - John 3:13-17; Numbers 21:4b-9

        This upcoming Sunday, in the Gospel reading from Mark, we will hear Jesus tell the disciples and the crowds that if they wish to be his followers, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him, that they must lose their life for the sake of Jesus and the Gospel in order to save it.  Today is a feast that has a similar theme: the exaltation of the Holy Cross.  This is a feast that once again focuses our hearts and our minds on the cross of Christ. 

         This feast celebrates the recovery of the Cross of Christ in the 4th century by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine, and then the new recovery of this cross from the non-Christians who had seized it.  The main focus of this feast is the meaning of the cross, the mystery that we attempt to understand during our journey of faith, not so much on the history of the recovery of the physical cross. 

         The book of Numbers recounts how the people of Ancient Israel suffered and died after having been bitten by snakes on their journey in the desert, how God gave them the remedy of a bronze serpent mounted to a pole so that when they looked at it, they were healed.  The serpent can symbolize for us in the modern world all that entices us away from God and away from our faith.  Just at the Israelites needed healing, we need healing, too, on many different levels.  The Israelites looked at a bronze serpent on a wooden pole for healing; we look to Christ on a cross.  From that look, we can be healed just as the Israelites were healed in the desert.

         If we look at our modern culture through the lens of our faith, it should be shocking to us that our modern society often encourages sins of all types, as well as an indifference to the spiritual values of our faith.  In our modern culture, many seem to think and act as if there is nothing we could do that could truly harm us spiritually. 

         Yet, the Gospel message today is that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but rather to save it.  This is the message of the cross.  We don’t celebrate the cross because we want to suffer for the sake of suffering, but because we are saved through Christ and his death on the cross.  Christ brings meaning to our sufferings and the crosses we carry.  We unite our crosses to Christ’s own cross and sufferings. 

         As we celebrate the exaltation of the holy cross, may we rejoice that we have been saved by Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, that we are able to journey through life as followers of Christ.